Walt Whitman
Selected Poems 1855-1892
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
A fully unexpurgated collection that restores the sexual vitality and subversive flair suppressed by Whitman himself in later editions of Leaves of Grass.
A century after his death, Whitman is still celebrated as America's greatest poet. In this startling new edition of his work, Whitman biographer Gary Schmidgall presents over 200 poems in their original pristine form, in the chronological order in which they were written, with Whitman's original punctuation. Included in this volume are facsimiles of Whitman's original manuscripts, contemporary - and generally blistering - reviews of Whitman's poetry (not surprisingly Henry James hated it), and early pre-Leaves of Grass poems that return us to the physical Whitman, rejoicing - sometimes graphically - in homoerotic love.
Unlike the many other available editions, all drawn from the final authorized or "deathbed" Leaves of Grass, this collection focuses on the exuberant poems Whitman wrote during the creative and sexual prime of his life, roughly between l853 and l860. These poems are faithfully presented as Whitman first gave them to the world - fearless, explicit and uncompromised - before he transformed himself into America's respectable, mainstream Good Gray Poet through 30 years of revision, self-censorship and suppression.
Whitman admitted that his later poetry lacked the "ecstasy of statement" of his early verse. Revealing that ecstasy for the first time, this edition makes possible a major reappraisal of our nation first great poet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Schmidgall (The Stranger Wilde: Interpreting Oscar) writes that his problem in dissecting the gay side of Whitman is that it is "a key-hole business. One has to ..., well, prurient." He succeeds in his endeavor. Schmidgall's early chapters employ a pomposity of language that is inadvertently comical, while an autobiographical chapter deals largely with his self-outing. While it is not news that Whitman lived a homosexual life, Schmidgall finds critics, even recent ones, to admonish for their Pollyanna blinders. Whitman himself comes off badly for his genteel "devolutionary editions" of Leaves of Grass, which obscure the risky language of earlier versions that braved certain calumny. His amanuensis for his cautious recollections, the devoted Horace Traubel, receives a chapter. He transcribed millions of the poet's words, hoping for revelations; though a physical ruin, Whitman was too astute for that. Schmidgall ends with a garrulous "Walt & Oscar," exploiting Wilde's visit to the poet in 1882. Illustrated.